Japan must repent war crimes, shoulder due responsibilities: KCNA

PYONGYANG, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Japan must face up to its acts of aggression and shoulder its legal and moral responsibilities in order to seek conciliation with the international community, a victim organization of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Friday.

The Korean people's hatred for Japan has deepened over the past decades because Japan has never shown any repentance for its past atrocities, said the commission on issues of victims of Japanese military sexual slavery and forcible arrest.

To correctly face the crimes Japan had committed against Korea and its people and settle historical issues is Tokyo's legal obligation and moral responsibility, the commission stressed in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

Japan had made Korea its colony for more than 40 years and forced the Korean people to abandon their Korean names and stop using their own language, the statement said.

Even if Japan had made adequate compensation and offered apologies, the history of the Korean victims being coerced to be "comfort women" and slave laborers can never be forgotten, it added.

The fundamental reason that there are growing voices across the world demanding to reconfirm Japan's past crimes and question Japan's wrong attitude and historical stance is that Japan has always denied the facts and attempted to gloss over its crimes against humanity, it noted.

The DPRK commission urged Japan to assume moral and historical responsibilities and strive to cement stable and strong international relations with the rest of the world by next year, when Japanese imperialism will have been over for 70 years.